


And All the Bells on Earth Shall Ring

by sylviarachel



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Case Fic, Fluff, Friends to Lovers, Humour, John is a closet fan, John's Jumpers, M/M, Mrs. Hudson Ships It, Not Season/Series 03 Compliant, POV John Watson, Post-Reichenbach, So much talking, eventually, everybody probably has PTSD, guaranteed not series 3 compliant, worrying behaviour
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-01-17
Updated: 2014-12-12
Packaged: 2018-01-09 00:28:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 8,994
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1139291
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sylviarachel/pseuds/sylviarachel
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The Sherlock who came back is not the same one who went away.</p>
<p>(I don't know why the title. My excuse is that I started writing this at the beginning of December.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

When John gets home, the flat is dark and quiet. Too quiet, he immediately thinks: this isn’t the ordinary quiet of an unoccupied space, it’s the tense, expectant quiet of _Sherlock is up to something I’m not going to enjoy finding out about._ Which, at the moment, covers more territory than John is quite comfortable with.

John’s still not altogether used to this – to being back in the Baker Street flat, to balancing what he’s coming to think of as his day job (even though many of his shifts are overnight) with running round London in Sherlock’s wake, to having Sherlock back to life, back in _his_ life, shedding sparks of brilliance and chaos wherever he goes. It still feels fragile; he’s still wary, still prone to outbreaks of irrational rage, in which he shouts at Sherlock (whether or not the latter is actually present) until his throat is raw, and to eruptions of even more irrational paranoia that find him creeping downstairs at half three in the morning to verify that Sherlock is, in fact, still there and still breathing.

He agreed to come back to 221B when it became clear that he was never going to be able to process any of this otherwise, but he’s still not sure it was the right decision. He was learning to move on, without Sherlock, coming to terms with having been arse-over-teakettle in love with his mad flatmate, starting to look about him for other possibilities; some days, some minutes, he wonders what the hell possessed him to jump back on the crazy train. Other days, he looks back on his life without Sherlock and it looks like the waiting room of Death.

And Sherlock …

Well, the Sherlock who came back is not the same one who went away.

Oh, he’s still brilliant and abrasive, still alternates between manic whirlwind and epic sulk, still stands in the window sometimes, his violin singing under his hands, for hours and hours together. John still has to bully him into resting and refuelling, is still buying nicotine patches in bulk, has again resorted to bribing the local shopkeepers not to sell him cigarettes.

But.

But John texts Sherlock one afternoon, _got to stay late at work, can you get the shopping in pls, dont forget the milk_ , fully expecting to have to do it himself anyway, and two hours later receives a reply, _Have got shopping in; did not forget milk. SH_ , to which is attached a photo of a Sainsbury’s carrier bag containing a bottle of milk, a carton of eggs, a packet of bacon, a wholemeal loaf, a bag of apples, and two jars of jam.

But Sherlock’s violin sounds achingly sad, sadder than it ever has before – even after Irene Adler – until he notices that John is back in the flat and listening, and then he segues out of whatever melancholy thing he’s playing and into something he knows John enjoys hearing. Once, to John’s utter astonishment, it’s a little medley of themes from Rossini overtures, which John likes but Sherlock considers bumptious and unimaginative.

But even though Sherlock and Sally Donovan are back to their perpetual sparring, John starts to notice that both are pulling their punches.

But Sherlock sits and stares sometimes, and his eyes are the eyes of a child who has seen terrible things. If John said this to Sherlock, Sherlock would undoubtedly scoff and tell him he’s imagining things; and John would say quietly, _I don’t have to._ Because out in Afghanistan, he saw those eyes too many times to count.

So if this fraught, _occupied_ silence makes John a little bit twitchy, well, he’s got his reasons.

* * *

What Sherlock is up to is this: He’s curled up on John’s bed, on top of the duvet, wearing John’s pyjama trousers (which expose a ridiculous six inches of long, bony ankle above his long, bony feet) and wrapped up in John’s terry-cloth dressing-gown (which John knows he considers an epic sartorial disaster), his faced mashed into John’s pillow, snoring.

John’s tension ratchets up another level as he scans for signs that Sherlock’s injured, poisoned, drunk, high, sedated, or anything else that might explain … this.

There’s nothing -- or anyway nothing he can see. _As ever, John, you_ see _but you don’t_ observe, says Sherlock’s voice in his head, and John realizes with a bit of a jolt that Sherlock hasn’t said that to him, or anything like it, has barely even used that tone of voice to him, since before he … went away. What does that mean? Is John just losing his mind, again, to think it might mean anything?

Sherlock has always looked absurdly young when he’s sleeping, and despite the new lines in his face and the new threads of silver in his hair, he still does. John’s only half surprised to find his left hand reaching out to smooth back the fall of dark curls – cut short a few months ago, but growing out again now – from Sherlock’s forehead.

Sherlock doesn’t stir at the touch, but when John takes his hand away Sherlock’s forehead creases into a frown and he snuffles and curls more tightly around John’s pillow. The moment is almost unbearably intimate: here, in his own bedroom, John abruptly feels like a voyeur.

* * *

It’s late, and John’s knackered (six assorted falls, five broken bones, five cycling accidents including two concussions, four vomiting toddlers and a projectile-vomiting infant, four seizures, three infected ingrown toenails (all on the same pair of feet), two overdoses, two stab wounds, two emergency appendectomies, a Cuisinart mishap and a diabetic coma), and Sherlock’s only occupying about half of the bed, after all. He could go downstairs and kip on the sofa; he could commandeer Sherlock’s bed, assuming it’s at all habitable at present; or …

Not five minutes later, John has shucked his jumper, shirt and trousers, half-heartedly cleaned his teeth and shut the light, and he’s sliding in under the bedclothes on the other side of the bed.

Sherlock stirs and mutters quietly, but still doesn’t wake. For the next six hours, neither does John.

* * *

And then, just after seven the next morning, John wakes, quite suddenly, with Sherlock’s left arm wrapped tightly around his body and Sherlock’s breath warm on the back of his head.

For some time John lies very, very still and tries to slow his racing pulse.

Not to mention the _very inappropriate_ flow of blood to a certain portion of his anatomy.

“John,” Sherlock murmurs, low and slurred. “Not the purple one, John. The spines are poisonous.”

John stifles a laugh. If anyone in this bed has been having erotic dreams, it clearly isn’t Sherlock.

Sherlock nuzzles the back of John’s neck, murmurs, “No, look, John, the dromedary is in the _accelerator_ ,” and begins gently snoring.

* * *

Half an hour later, Sherlock snuffles and mutters unintelligibly and turns over onto his other side, and John finally gets out of bed and stumbles away to the loo.

Since Sherlock has appropriated his pyjama bottoms and dressing-gown, he ruthlessly commandeers Sherlock’s in exchange, turning up the bottoms of the trousers so the extra length won’t trip him up and doing his best to ignore the way the dressing-gown smells like Sherlock and glides silkily against the skin of his bare arms and the back of his neck.

And since there is clearly no point in trying to get back to sleep, he makes himself a cup of tea, sits down on the sofa and, without looking, picks up a paperback from the coffee table. It isn’t, he realizes when he opens it at the marked page, the Kurt Wallander mystery he started last week, nor is it the new Minette Walters Mrs Hudson pressed upon him two days ago (“Bit too graphic for me, I’m afraid, dear”). Something of Sherlock’s? But John has never known Sherlock to read fiction.

He reads another half-paragraph, to see if he can solve the mystery without cheating by looking at the front cover or the title page. It isn’t any of the things he’s been reading recently, but it is familiar. Very familiar. And not Sherlock’s at all, he realizes, but his own. A glance at the flyleaf confirms it: it’s the copy of _The Colour of Magic_ he bought with his pocket-money when he was in secondary school.

Last seen, with the rest of his battered Terry Pratchett paperbacks, his Tolkiens and Diana Wynne Joneses and Douglas Adamses and a library-discard copy of _The Once and Future King_ , in one of the boxes of John’s abandoned belongings that made its way to Harry and Clara’s house in Sutton when John’s mum died, and thence eventually to Baker Street when Clara sold the house and moved into a tiny flat in Notting Hill, and have been sitting unregarded in a corner of the lounge ever since.

So: Sherlock has been grubbing about in John’s childhood belongings without permission. Entirely unsurprising, and John finds he can’t even summon up much indignation. Sherlock has also been reading John’s books, though, and that is surprising – what could such uncharacteristic behaviour be in aid of?

Then again … uncharacteristic behaviour has been S.O.P. since Sherlock came back. Is this, should this be, more or less worrying than the shopping, the Rossini, the haunted stare?

_I’m not trained for this, dammit,_ John thinks. Unless, of course, being a head-case is a form of training in how to live with one.

* * *

Sherlock wanders downstairs just after half eight, blinking and rubbing his eyes. He spots John on the sofa and goes still, taking in his attire and the paperback in his hand, and John thinks for a moment that he’s going to comment, but the moment passes, and all Sherlock says is, “Tea?”

It’s not clear whether this is an offer or a request, so – _Why the hell not_ – John decides to experiment: “Please,” he says, and grins.

And Sherlock, for a wonder, raises one eyebrow, turns back into the kitchen, and fills the kettle.

The grin falls off John’s face. “Sherlock,” he says, getting up off the sofa and starting towards the kitchen, “you don’t have to—”

“You’re wearing my dressing-gown,” Sherlock observes mildly. “And my pyjama trousers.”

“You were wearing mine,” John points out, “and it’s too cold to be swanning about the flat in my vest and pants. I had to wear something.” He tries to make his tone convey – entirely falsely – that if only the day weren’t such a chilly one, he would consider the swanning-about-in-vest-and-pants option equally acceptable.

“You have got _clothes_ ,” says Sherlock. “Jeans and shirts and jumpers and things. You could have got dressed.”

“I could have,” John agrees, “but I’ve just worked a twelve-hour shift and it’s pissing down rain outside and frankly I couldn’t be arsed, so.”

The kettle switches off with a muted _ding!_ and Sherlock swoops about the kitchen, fetching mugs and teabags and sugar and milk.

“Here you are,” he says, several minutes later, presenting John with what is unmistakeably a mug of English Breakfast, milk, no sugar. “Tea.”

John just looks at it for a bit. Then he says, “Thanks, Sherlock.”

Sherlock shoots him a self-satisfied grin. “You didn’t think I knew how to make tea, did you,” he says.

“That’s not—”

“And you’re reserving judgement until you’ve tasted it. Very wise. For all you know—” the grin goes slightly manic, and John’s level of alertness instantly ratchets up again— “it could be spiked with all manner of unpleasant things.”

“Sherlock, I’ve been standing right here all the time,” John objects.

“And I’ve certainly never managed to fool you by sleight-of-hand before,” Sherlock says. His eyes glint, then widen in alarm as he realizes what John’s suddenly rigid posture and frozen expression mean, and he erupts into a storm of half-coherent words: “John, I’m sorry, I’m so sorry, that isn’t, I didn’t mean—”

“It’s fine.” John grits the words out between clenched teeth as he turns away. He’s got both hands wrapped around the mug, and it’s starting to burn his palms; he focuses on that sensation to keep the visions at bay. _Not real. Not real. That unbelievable wanker standing behind you in the kitchen, very much alive and apparently doing his best to wind you up,_ that’s _what’s real._

“It’s not.” Sherlock has followed him out into the lounge, leaving his own mug sitting on the kitchen worktop. “It’s not fine, at all. I upset you, it was thoughtless and cruel, and I’m sorry.”

“Jesus, I wish you’d stop that,” John says, before he can think better of it.

He sits down heavily on the sofa and gulps at his tea, which he’s miraculously managed not to splash all over himself. It’s still hot enough to burn his tongue; he’s grateful for that, since hallucinatory tea would presumably be more accommodating.

Looking up, he finds that Sherlock is gaping at him. “What?” he says. “You wish I’d stop what?”

“Fucking _apologizing_ ,” John says. He’s so _tired_. “You’ve started doing it all the time, and it’s— it’s— bloody disconcerting.”

“You want me to _stop apologizing_ ,” Sherlock repeats. He frowns; leans down and lays one big hand against John’s forehead: the checking-for-fever gesture he learned from John. John pulls away, irritated.

“You’ve been apologizing and getting in the shopping and playing things I like on your violin,” he says furiously, knowing how completely absurd it is to be furious about these kind, considerate actions, “and now you’re making me tea and reading my old books and wearing my pyjamas and _cuddling me in my own sodding bed_ , Sherlock, and I would just like to know—”

He stops; Sherlock’s mouth has actually fallen open, and his eyes are so wide that John is almost legitimately afraid they’ll pop, cartoon-fashion, out of their sockets. “Oh god,” Sherlock says. Whispers, really. “I thought that was just a _dream_. Stupid, _stupid_. I should have known that you—”

“Sherlock.” John puts his mug down, suddenly sure that it’s now or never. He stands up. Sherlock is pacing now, both hands tugging at his sleep-frazzled hair, completely ignoring him.

John waits for a convenient change of trajectory and inserts himself into Sherlock’s path.

Sherlock jerks to a halt just in time to avoid a collision, and before he can swerve to go around, John takes his courage in both figurative hands and reaches up with his real ones to take hold of Sherlock’s shoulders.

“I realized some things while you were … away,” he says, conversationally. “Some things I wished I’d done, and said, while you were still here. I didn’t think I’d ever get to act on it, but, well.”

Holding Sherlock’s gaze, he slides his left hand along the curve of Sherlock’s right shoulder, up the side of his elegant throat; threads his fingers into those soft curls; gently tugs Sherlock’s head down, while tilting his own face up, until their lips touch.

It’s all done in slow motion, and gently, because the last thing he wants is to provoke a fight-or-flight response, and he’s planning to keep the kiss brief and chaste, but Sherlock – after a fox-in-the-headlamps moment of frozen alarm – apparently has a very different idea of how this should go.

By the time Sherlock pulls away and reels back from him, some unguessable time later, John’s breathing hard and fast, his pulse is racing, and he’s not wearing anywhere near enough clothing to conceal what’s happening in parts south.

And Sherlock … well, Sherlock seems to have gone beyond arousal and into some manic no-man’s-land of shock and awe.

“Breathe, love,” John finds himself saying, smoothing his palms down Sherlock’s trembling arms. “C’mon, just breathe for me, yeah?”

“John,” Sherlock whispers. John waits for him to say something else; he doesn’t.

“Come and sit down,” John says. “It’s all right, you’re going to be fine, I’m sorry, you don’t need to freak out about this. Come and sit down.”

Outwardly John is calm and in control, because they can’t both lose the plot simultaneously, the flat might just explode with the combined stroppery and then where would Mrs Hudson be? Inside his head, though, a voice is shouting that he’s done it now, he’s fucked everything up beyond repair, and what the bloody hell was he _thinking_ , dammit?

* * *

Once Sherlock’s breathing normally again, and his pulse has slowed from terrified-baby-rabbit-on-speed to adult-human-male-possibly-wearing-nicotine-patches, John takes his hands away and says, “All right?”

Sherlock nods, squeezing his eyes shut. “That,” he says. “That was. You kissed me. You _kissed_ me. _You_ kissed _me._ Deliberately.”

“To be fair,” John says, “I think you finished up kissing me quite a bit more than I kissed you.” He studies his flatmate carefully. “Was it … should I not have done that?”

Sherlock’s eyes fly open. “Yes,” he says. Hands in the hair again, tugging. “No. Yes. I don’t know, God, I don’t _know_.” He looks at John, some kind of super-intense mega-stare that looks like it could melt steel, and says, “Why did you?”

John should of course have been expecting this question, he realizes, but he didn’t, and is surprised into a completely unguarded answer: “Because I wanted to, before, and when— when it was too late— I was sorry I hadn’t. I thought maybe, if you’d known how much— if you’d known how I— maybe you wouldn’t—”

“You thought—” Sherlock looks horrified. “You thought I’d killed myself because—”

“Sorry,” John says hastily. “Sorry, that was stupid, I know it wasn’t— I know you had— I know that _now_ , Sherlock, but at the time— Look, okay, forget it. Just, just delete that, okay?”

“I can’t,” Sherlock says.

“Can’t … what?”

“I can’t delete it.” He looks a bit sheepish, as though he’s making an embarrassing admission, when he says, “I’ve never been able to delete … you. Things about you.”

If John were a crying sort of man, he thinks, he’d be starting up the waterworks just about now. “Sherlock, that’s. Um. Possibly the most romantic thing anyone’s ever said to me.”

“You think so?”

“Of course it is. It’s sweet, and touching, and lovely. And also, because you’re you and I’m me, it’s _completely ridiculous_. Are we … how are you feeling, now, about the kissing? Because I’m, what you just said, I would really like to kiss you again right now.”

Sherlock’s eyes open very wide, in an expression that could be either excitement or sheer terror, and John’s honestly not sure which. Opting to err on the side of caution, he holds up both hands in the universal sign for Backing Off Now, So Everybody Calm the Fuck Down.

“Okay,” he says. “Okay. Not right now, got it.”

He takes a few deep breaths.

“You know, I’ve never quite known what to think about you and sex. I mean, not that I ever took Mycroft very seriously on that topic, but. You know. It’s not as though you’ve ever brought home a boyfriend, girlfriend, anyone, so. And then Irene Adler.”

Sherlock looks puzzled. “What about Irene Adler?”

“Well. You know. You got a bit … obsessed. First time I’d ever seen you show any signs of … interest. Sexual, romantic, whatever it was, I don’t—”

“It wasn’t either one,” Sherlock says, laughing.

“What?”

“I was never interested in having sex with Irene Adler,” Sherlock says firmly, “and I was _certainly_ not _in_ _love_ with her. She did fascinate me, though,” he adds, looking very slightly wistful. “She’s really very clever. And that day when we first met her, she was impossible to read. No one’s ever done that to me before; it was … novel.”

Something still doesn’t add up there. “So all that showing off for her, and the stammering flustered thing, that was … what, then, if not you being sexually interested?”

“That,” says Sherlock, looking distinctly out of sorts, “was me being jealous. Because she was _flirting with you_ , John, or hadn’t you noticed?”

John casts his mind back. “With me? No,” he says, “I can’t say that I had.”

“As ever, John, you see, but you--”

“So, sex,” John says, trying to get the conversation back on track.

Sherlock rolls his eyes. “Yes, I have had it, and no, it doesn’t alarm me.”

“No, you’ve said,” John says. “But it does something else to you, doesn’t it, something you don’t like.”

Sherlock scowls.

“Listen,” John says. “Listen, Sherlock. Cards on the table, okay? I lost you once. You were gone, you were never coming back, and whatever I’d been to you, it wasn’t enough to—”

Sherlock’s mouth opens on some kind of protest; John holds up a hand, and he subsides.

“Let me finish,” John says, and swallows hard. “Please. The thing is … the thing is, Sherlock, I’m not doing that again. I am not losing you again, it’s. Not happening. What I want most out of life right now, Sherlock, is whatever is going to not fuck things up. Whatever is going to result in us not losing each other, ever again. Okay?”

Sherlock is staring at him with wide, solemn eyes. “I,” he says, and then stalls. Blinks.

John waits.

“I thought,” Sherlock says finally. “I thought you were my friend. My only friend. I was wrong.” John firmly quashes his reflexive hurt and panic: _let’s see where this is going, first._ He’s glad of this when Sherlock continues, “I came to realize that I had, I _have_ , other friends. Molly. Lestrade. Mike Stamford. Mrs Hudson.” He pauses, then adds, with visible reluctance, “Mycroft. Even Sally Donovan, it turns out, hates me considerably less than either of us had previously supposed.”

There’s another, even longer, pause.

“But,” Sherlock says, “if that were so, if all of these people were also friends, why were you so different? What was it about you that …” he drops his gaze to his drawn-up knees, still ridiculously clothed in John’s pyjamas. “That made living without you so utterly intolerable? Why did I feel, all the time I was … elsewhere, that I had left the better part of myself behind?”

John has been so determined not to interrupt or interfere that when he finds his hand has crept, without his realizing, from his own knee over to Sherlock’s, he nearly snatches it back. But then Sherlock looks at it, small and blunt-fingered, curved around his knee, and carefully lays his own long, pale, elegant hand over it, and John exhales relief: he hasn’t fucked it all up, then. Or at any rate not yet.

“Not the better part, Sherlock,” he says quietly. “That was always you.”

Sherlock makes negating motions with his free hand, which John decides not to argue with just now.

“It’s not that I’m alarmed by sex,” he says. “I’ve always quite enjoyed sex, actually, when I could be bothered with it. And it shuts off the brain almost as effectively as certain narcotics, though the effects are regrettably brief. But if one makes the mistake of having sex with people one _knows_ – or, worse, people one _likes_ – it becomes … _complicated_. There are consequences. Entanglements. _Feelings_. One loses control of … things.”

_Only Sherlock._

“So what you’re saying,” John manages, “is that it isn’t the idea of having _sex_ with me that alarms you, it’s the idea of having sex with _me_.”

“Yes— _no!_ ” Sherlock leaps up from the sofa, nearly knocking John off it in the process, and starts pacing again. “As usual, you’ve added up all the evidence to reach a completely erroneous conclusion.”

“As usual,” John replies dryly. He’s reassured by this return to their more standard relationship dynamics, actually, but he’s not about to reinforce the behaviour by saying so.

“The point is, this is different. _You_ are different. I’ve never wanted the complications, the entanglements, the _feelings_ , I’ve avoided them, but I can’t with you, they’re _already there_ , and what’s worse is that _I don’t want them to go away_. What am I meant to do about that? It’s _infuriating._ ”

So much for reassuringly back to normal. Still, though, feelings: feelings are an area in which, if not exactly an expert, John can at least be confident he’s slightly less stupid than Sherlock.

“I’m _alarmed_ , John, because you are uniquely important – _essential_ – to me, and – _this_ —” Sherlock waves both arms in an encompassing _everything here present_ gesture— “therefore offers me a uniquely terrifying variety of opportunities for catastrophic failure.”

He stops pacing and turns to glare at John with what looks like a mixture of exasperation and despair.

“You’re an idiot,” John tells him cheerfully. He’s so relieved that he can’t make himself stop smiling. “I mean, I knew that, but this is a particularly impressive demonstration. Come here, you stupid plonker.” He pats the sofa seat.

Sherlock sits, eyeing him warily.

“What you just said,” John says, “is you’re afraid of fucking this up. Now, what was _I_ just saying? Were you listening to me at all?” He’s not got Sherlock’s eidetic memory, but he can recall his own words well enough: “‘What I want most out of life right now is whatever will not fuck things up. Whatever is going to result in us not losing each other again.’ Remember that bit?”

“Yes?” Sherlock says, still wary. “Yes. You did say … more or less that.”

John rolls his eyes. “So. What do you think I meant by that?”

“You know I’m not good at this, John!” Sherlock exclaims. He’s clearly about to leap up and start pacing again; John grabs both his hands to restrain him. “How am I supposed to—”

“Okay,” John says. “Okay. I’m sorry. Here’s what it means, Sherlock. It means, if you don’t want … this, the more-than-friends, snogging, sex, it’s fine. We can agree to not let it happen again. If you do want all of that, it’s fine. Better than fine – fantastic, actually. Or if you want, I don’t know, something in between – snogging but not sex, or cuddling but not snogging, or … _something_ : also fine. It’s down to you, to what you want; I’ll follow your lead.” This should make him feel pathetic, this complete surrendering of his own desires, but it doesn’t, because he’s lived through the alternative. “All right? Is that clearer?”

Sherlock swallows. Nods. “Much clearer,” he says. “Thank you.” There’s a long, fraught silence; then he looks up at John and says, “What do _you_ want, John?”

“Can’t you deduce?” John parries, trying to laugh.

“I’d like you to tell me. If it were up to you, where would we go from here?”

John draws a deep, shaky breath. _This wasn’t how this was supposed to go._ But if Sherlock were going to let him out of this, he … well, Sherlock is clearly not going to let him out of it, so.

“If it were up to me,” he says, slowly, “I’d want all of it. I’d want to be your best mate and your partner in crime and your lover. I’d want to run up the stairs after you and tear your clothes off when we’re both high on adrenaline at the end of a case, and I’d want to bring you tea and watch crap telly with your head on my shoulder in between cases, and bicker about who’s going to get the shopping and whether or not you’re going to eat. I’d want to have your back when you do something ridiculously dangerous, again, and know you’ll cover for me when having your back involves breaking the law, again. I’d want to be the person the hospital rings in case of emergency, and if I’m ever in hospital I’d want you there with me, bossing everyone around until they throw you out and you have to get Mycroft to make them let you back in again. I’d want your face to be the first thing I see when I wake up in the morning, and the last thing I see before I fall asleep at night. Or, you know. Whenever. I’d want to be your narcotics substitute of choice. I’d want us to grow old together or die trying.” He swallows hard and adds, all in a rush, “I’d want you to stop thinking no one loves you and know that I do.”

John’s face has gone hot; he ducks his head, embarrassed by this outburst even as he’s glad to have finally got it all out.

“In other words,” Sherlock says, in a speculative tone, “exactly the way things have always been, but with added sex and snogging.”

John casts him a suspicious sidelong glance. “Are you taking the—”

“That’s. That’s, um, that’s very convenient,” says Sherlock. He now sounds just a bit breathless. “Because I think, um. I think that’s what I’d like, too.”

Raising his head, John looks into Sherlock’s eyes. He has to catch his breath, then, because—

_This amazing, fantastic, bloody infuriating man I’m in love with, he loves me. He’ll never say it, but he loves me._

_I suppose I should have worked it out from the dressing-gown and the books. But then, I_ am _an idiot._

“Good.” John says, because he can’t say any of that out loud. “That’s … good.”

Sherlock swallows hard. Then he grins like the bloody Cheshire cat.

John’s still not entirely sure what conclusion they’ve just arrived at -- are they dating? is Sherlock about to start introducing John as his boyfriend? are they considering marriage? -- but he feels buoyant with relief and, yes, happiness. He pictures himself trying to explain this to anyone else, and can’t – the whole thing is so ridiculous, and so very, very Sherlock-and-John, that it defies explanation.

“So,” he says, because this is Sherlock and it’s important to get things properly sorted, using words they both understand. “We’re agreeing to give the sex thing a try, are we?”

Sherlock pretends to give this question serious consideration. John can tell that he’s pretending by the glint in his eyes, and swats him none too gently on the shoulder. “Oi! Not joking, you git.”

Abruptly sobering, Sherlock says, “Yes. Not joking.” He pauses, biting his lower lip in a way that goes straight to John’s brainstem, and then: “John, would it be all right if I kissed you now?”

Which seems so absurd that John nearly bursts out laughing, but explicit consent is something to be encouraged, particularly where Sherlock’s concerned, so he valiantly refrains and instead says, “Yes, please. ’s much as you like. God, yes.”

Sherlock’s face crinkles into his most naked and delighted and disarming smile, the one that’s been making John’s heart skip since the first time he saw it in a headlamp-lit back street in Brixton. “Oh, _good_ ,” he says, and bends his head down to John’s.


	2. Chapter 2

Of course, the very next thing that happens – before John has a chance to ask any of the hundred questions he’d like answers to, questions like _How long?_ and _How?_ and _Why?_ and _What the bloody hell was that with my pyjamas?_ \-- is a rapid thumping up the stairs, followed at more or less the same moment by Sherlock and John springing apart and trying to look as though they haven’t just been enthusiastically snogging (or at least not each other), and by the door of flat B banging open and Greg Lestrade saying “Sherlock, why haven’t you been answering my—” and then falling into shocked silence as he registers (because whatever Sherlock may say when he’s annoyed, Greg’s not actually stupid) the many signs of very recent amorous activity.

John wishes that the floor would open up and swallow him (or, better, swallow Greg, because things were going along very well until he turned up, ta very much), and that they’d been arsed to lock the bloody door (Sherlock never does – he seems to assume that since he could defeat the lock in about twenty seconds, there’s no point in using it against other people – but John _knows better_ , damn it), and also that he’d put his fucking clothes on like a normal person instead of playing along with Sherlock’s bloody idiotic pyjama-swapping nonsense, because he’s certain he looks even more absurd in Sherlock’s turned-up pyjama trousers and flapping blue silk dressing-gown than Sherlock does in John’s things (Sherlock could just conceivably have borrowed John’s terry robe on his way out of the bath, whereas John probably looks like a kid playing dress-up).

Sherlock, naturally, is impervious to all such considerations and is up off the sofa, demanding data, almost before Greg has recovered from the shock.

“I’ll just go and put the kettle on,” John mutters, by way of covering his hasty exit from the lounge. Sherlock calls after him in a protesting tone, but John ignores him.

He does, in fact, flip the switch on the kettle on his way through the kitchen, because the tea Sherlock made him has gone cold and he really does very much need a cuppa just now.

When he comes back downstairs, fully dressed though insufficiently showered, a few minutes later, Sherlock is sitting in his armchair, looking impatient, and Greg is sitting in John’s, looking damp. John can’t see his face, but the set of his shoulders telegraphs frustration.

“John!” Sherlock exclaims. “Good, you’re finally back. Come here.”

“Tea, Greg?” John calls from the kitchen. He is not Sherlock’s pet border collie, damn it.

“Ta, mate,” Greg says to him, and to Sherlock, “ _Now_ can I—”

“Yes, yes, go ahead.” Out of the corner of his eye, John sees Sherlock wave an imperious hand. He blinks: has Sherlock actually _made Greg wait for John_ before telling him about the case? (Presumably there’s a case, or why is Greg here? John spares a moment to be profoundly grateful that it’s just Greg, because he shudders to think how certain other Met officers of their acquaintance would have reacted to the scene just interrupted in the lounge of 221B.)

John makes three mugs of Irish Breakfast (milk for himself, sugar for Sherlock, both for Greg) and carries them through. He hands out mugs – Greg thanks him; Sherlock doesn’t, but takes his mug and absently starts drinking from it, which feels like a small victory – and then has to decide what to do with himself, as Greg is in his chair. Finally, with a mental shrug, he decides he might as well be hung ( _hanged, John_ , Sherlock’s pained voice corrects in his head)for a sheep as for a lamb, and perches on the arm of Sherlock’s chair. Sherlock glances up at him with a brief, blinding grin.

It’s very brief, though, because while John’s been brewing tea and handing out mugs, Greg has been laying out the details of his case, and Sherlock’s focus is once again on the Work. As it should be, John reminds himself.

“Got any theories?” Greg says at last, looking at Sherlock hopefully.

“Five,” says Sherlock. He’s studying the glossy photo Greg’s just handed him, an extreme close-up of an astonishingly ugly and, according to Greg, astonishingly expensive diamond necklace nestled against the smooth, delicately tanned surface of a woman’s collarbones and cleavage. “The most obvious hypothesis is that the daughter parted company with the rest of her school trip a day early and came home to steal the necklace and pawn it, or possibly fence it, before her father could return it to his safe-deposit box. I suppose you’ve checked for CCTV footage?”

“Of course,” Greg says. He still, after all these months, looks vaguely surprised by the lack of vitriol and insults. “No sign of her approaching from any of the cameras in range, and nothing close enough to the house to cover the front or back door. And,” he adds, “as I said, the girl’s friends and the two teachers chaperoning the trip all vouch for her coming back with them as planned.”

Sherlock waves this away. “The friends would lie to cover for her, and the teachers would lie to avoid looking irresponsible,” he says. “Obviously. After all, it’s only a case of theft; it’s not as though _actual human lives_ were at stake.”

John frowns at him, trying to work out what he means by this very pointed repetition of John’s own words. Words spoken in anger, several years and a whole lifetime ago.

“You’ll find she owes someone a nontrivial amount of money, I expect,” Sherlock continues, ignoring John’s frown. “Drugs are most likely – I _do_ hope it’s occurred to you to investigate that angle? – but there’s also the possibility of blackmail. It’s obvious”—he flicks a sheaf of 8×10 glossy photos with a negligent fingernail—“that she’s acquired some … interesting acquaintances whom I’m sure she’d very much like her parents not to know about.”

Greg frowns thoughtfully down at the photos, then up at Sherlock.

“Right,” he says, and begins gathering up his evidence.

Sherlock says nothing at all, until Greg is nearly out the door. Then, as though he’s just thought of it, he says, “If it’s not drugs, it’s also possible her parents don’t know she’s bisexual. Go carefully.”

Greg blinks. “Right,” he says again, and then he’s out the door.

“How did you know?” John asks. Wondering whether Sherlock will actually explain. If there’s evidence, or if he was just guessing.

All Sherlock says is, “Long experience,” and in a tone that suggests he’s not in the mood to explain further.

John stops caring very much about explanations when Sherlock reels him in by the belt-loops and begins kissing him as if both their lives depended on it.

* * *

Mrs Hudson accosts John a few evenings later when he gets home from the hospital, darting out to intercept him before he can start up the stairs and herding him into her flat for tea. He lets her because Sherlock’s off talking to someone about toothbrush wear patterns and after the day he’s had he doesn’t much fancy sitting upstairs on his own, and also because he suspects she’s been trying to engineer this conversation for some time and he might as well get it over.

“John, dear,” she says, when she’s got him trapped on her sofa with a cup of Lady Grey and a slice of Battenberg cake on a plate. “Is Sherlock all right? I’ve been so worried about him, ever since he … you know.”

John sips his tea. “I think,” he says after a minute. “I think he will be. Eventually.”

When Mrs Hudson makes her _well-dear-you-know-best-but…_ face, he adds, “I’m working on it, Mrs Hudson.”

She smiles maternally and pats his hand. “All right, then,” she says. “And … you’ve sorted everything out, then, the two of you? I must say, dear, no one would have blamed you if you’d refused to take him back, after … of course we know now that he thought he was acting for the best, but all the same--”

John opens his mouth to say that it’s not a question of _taking him back_ because it was never like that, before, but what comes out instead is, “It was like getting the other half of myself back, after thinking I’d lost it forever. I couldn’t turn that down, Mrs Hudson, not if my life depended on it.”

He blinks. _Shit, did I actually say that out loud?_

“Oh, you boys,” Mrs Hudson says. She pats his hand and smiles at him fondly, her eyes suspiciously bright.

“Not to worry,” John says, trying to lighten the mood. “I’m feeding him up properly while I’ve got his attention.”

“I’m glad to hear it, dear. Oh! I’ve just made a batch of those gingersnaps he likes, I’ll just put some in a tin for you, shall I?”

She stands up and goes into the kitchen, where John hears her blowing her nose.

* * *

“So that thing with my pyjamas,” John says, as casually as he can manage. “Sleeping in my bed. That was … what exactly?”

Sherlock very pointedly doesn’t look at him. “It helped me sleep,” he says.

“You hate sleeping,” John can’t resist pointing out.

“I do,” Sherlock says, sounding more like himself, and making a long-suffering face at John. ( _Eye contact. Good._ ) “It seems like such a waste. But as you never tired of pointing out” ( _Sarcasm. Also good._ ) “even I can’t _actually_ survive without _some_ sleep.”

“Okay,” John concedes. “But normally you only sleep to stop me nagging you, or because you’re falling over. Voluntarily setting out to get a full night’s sleep -- bit out of character, wasn’t it?”

“Bored.” _Aaaaand so much for eye contact._

“I thought you were working on that business with the stolen geese?”

“Oh, _that_.” Sherlock rolls his eyes. “I’d sorted that in a couple of hours. They weren’t stolen at all – only _borrowed_. It turned out that one of them had swallowed a signet ring belonging to an airline pilot, and he was desperate to get it back because it had belonged to his father—”

“Sentiment,” John says, hiding a smile.

“—Exactly. But as the pilot was an idiot, it didn’t occur to him to make a note, at the time of the incident, of _which_ goose was the culprit. So rather than simply stealing that one and awaiting the inevitable, he stole the entire truckload, drove it to a small nearby airfield, and – you’ll like this, John – persuaded the underemployed airport manager to let him use the security equipment to _x-ray all the geese_.”

“You’re _joking_.” John grins, delighted by the improbability of this scenario. Definitely one for the blog. _The Wild Goose Chase_ , maybe? “How did you work that out?”

“Well,” Sherlock says, preening only a little, “it was perfectly obvious once I discovered that the owner of the geese had picked up a pair of very wet hitchhikers carrying a stuffed sheep.”

He explains the chain of deductions, and John enjoys them and tells him how brilliant he is, and it’s only later that John realizes he’s been neatly played.

* * *

He gives it another go the following day, after trying and failing to find his striped jumper in any of the places it might logically be, and eventually (and with some irritation and even more bafflement) running it to earth in Sherlock’s bedroom, neatly folded and tucked under a pillow.

“All right,” he says, waving it gently at Sherlock as he goes into the sitting-room, where Sherlock is lounging on the sofa, practically upside down, with one long leg crossed over the other knee and one lean bare foot flat against Mrs Hudson’s wallpaper. “I think you can deduce where I’ve just found this jumper. _My_ jumper. Care to explain?”

He’s not sure what he was expecting, exactly, but what actually happens is that Sherlock’s cheeks go very pink, his eyes go very wide, and he sits up abruptly and then, just as abruptly, falls over again, out cold on the sofa.

_Just positional hypotension_ , John reminds himself, sternly shutting down the differential diagnosis engine in his head as he crosses the room to the sofa, _secondary to not eating properly and then faffing about like a bloody child_. Sherlock would of course step right on and over the coffee table; John makes a point of going sedately around it, like a grown-up.

Sherlock’s already alert and responsive again by the time John reaches him, and is also obviously feeling self-conscious and rather cross.

“It isn’t a crime to borrow your flatmate’s jumper,” he says, folding his arms and scowling.

“No,” John agrees mildly. “It isn’t. Although when you want to borrow things it’s customary to _ask._ ”

“I did ask. Not my fault you weren’t here.”

“Sherlock—”

“There’s no need to go on about it, John.” Sherlock’s very much on his dignity now, deploying his loftiest, toffiest tone. “I shan’t do it again if it upsets you so much.”

“Sherlock, I’m not upset that you borrowed my jumper,” John says patiently, sitting down on the other end of the sofa. He doesn’t roll his eyes, but it’s a near thing. “I’d just like to know, you know, _why_ you borrowed my jumper. Without asking. And hid it under your pillow. For at least a week. Clearly you weren’t wanting to _wear_ it, so. I could be wrong, but I don’t _think_ I’m making unreasonable demands here.”

Sherlock scowls his most ferocious scowl. It’s weirdly adorable.

John resolutely doesn’t smile; instead, he sits calmly on the sofa and just … waits.

Eventually, inevitably, Sherlock explodes. It’s a small explosion, fortunately: rather than leaping up and striding about the sitting-room in full auto-strop, he just ruffles his hair furiously and flings his arms about a bit and finally says, in a voice full of pre-emptive truculence, “It was helping me sleep. It … smelled like you.”

John blinks in astonishment. He swallows around an abrupt lump in his throat. Then, very deliberately, he shakes out the jumper, folds it into a military-neat rectangle, and – holding Sherlock’s increasingly baffled gaze – hands it back.

“Oh,” Sherlock says, low. He clutches the jumper with both hands and looks at John as though John has done something extraordinary.

John lets him.

“Or,” he says, after a bit, “you could give the jumper back, and sleep with me instead.”

Sherlock’s eyes go impossibly wider. He stares and stares. Finally, finally, he swallows audibly and holds the folded jumper out towards John.

John takes it and puts it on the coffee table. Then he leans close for a soft, slow, deliberate kiss.

* * *

The secret turns out to be that – to John’s utter non-surprise – Sherlock has nightmares now.

The first time one of them wakes him (a hoarse cut-off scream, a flailing arm striking his shoulder, a well-placed kick to his shin), he reacts less well than he’d have liked: instantly alert, but not instantly oriented, he mistakes Sherlock’s dream crisis, whatever it is, for a real one and – shouting “Get _down_!” in a kind of hoarse half-whisper – drags them both backwards off the far side of the bed to shelter on the floor before his eyes are all the way open. By the time he’s sufficiently awake to realize that there’s no enemy and no intruder and he’s been a bit of an idiot, Sherlock’s awake too, and clearly unable to work out whether to be terrified, furious, caustic or embarrassed.

Being Sherlock, he briefly attempts to carry off all four at once, but eventually settles on a sort of shame-faced glare.

“Sorry,” John says, a bit sheepishly. “May have overreacted a bit there.”

With a _hmmph!_ ,Sherlock curls his arms more tightly around his drawn-up knees.

“Want to talk about it?” John offers.

“Absolutely not,” says Sherlock.

John pretends not to notice the little tremor in his voice.

He climbs to his feet, gets back into bed, and waits to see what will happen next. For what feels like a long time, Sherlock sits in the semi-darkness, his spine pressed into the corner formed by the bed-frame and the wall. John’s dangling hand finds its way into his hair; Sherlock leans into the touch and quietly shivers.

Eventually, he stands up, climbs back onto the bed, and wraps himself around and over John’s body. John pretends he’s already asleep, even though he’s fairly sure Sherlock can tell he’s shamming, because he’s also fairly sure Sherlock does not want any acknowledgement of or comments on the fact that he’s very quietly weeping into the back of John’s neck.

* * *

It’s blackmail and not drugs, Lestrade’s case, as it eventually turns out. The girl’s father is coldly furious, her mother visibly struggling not to lose her composure.

“How could you think we would care about something like that?” she wails.

The girl – Amanda – turns silently to her father, who silently turns away; and her mother gives up and crumples into muffled sobs.

John is deeply relieved when Sally Donovan kicks him and Sherlock out of the room.

“Just for curiosity,” John says, when they’re back at home and decompressing with tea and ginger biscuits, “when did you work it out? That I’m. You know. Not—”

“Well, you kept saying you weren’t gay,” Sherlock says, “but you never once said _I’m straight._ ”

“Noticed that, did you? Most people don’t.”

Sherlock looks smug. “You’re pathologically truthful,” he says, “so it seemed likely that if you actually _were_ straight, you’d have said so. Also,” he adds, ratcheting the smugness up a few turns, “you tried to pull me shortly after we met, which was a bit of a clue.”

“At Angelo’s, you mean? That wasn’t _pulling_ ,” John protests, clinging to the shreds of his dignity. “That was … getting to know each other. And. Er. Scouting the territory.”

“‘Scouting the territory’?” Sherlock’s eyebrows rise in amused disbelief.

“You know. Gauging interest and, er, availability. I’ve always had rubbish gaydar,” John confesses. “Harry used to take the piss. Anyway, you might think looking in both directions would make things easier, but. You’d be amazed how many extremely straight men and gay women I’ve _really_ regretted trying to pull. If something’s not going anywhere, best to find out sooner than later.”

“If someone’s married to his work, for instance,” Sherlock says. His tone is hard to read.

“For instance, yeah,” John agrees.

“So, if I’d been more encouraging…”

John shrugs. “Who knows?”

Sherlock is making his _how-could-I-be-so-stupid_ face, which prompts John to ask, “Why weren’t you? I mean, were you just not interested then, or—”

_How could I be so stupid?_ dissolves into _Is it actually possible to be as much of an idiot as you appear to be?_ John is considering whether to feel insulted when Sherlock says, “ _Not interested_? John, I was interested the moment I looked at you. And then I did what I always do and you were amazed instead of pissed off, and then I was so interested that it was _terrifying_. Since you were pretending not to notice, I eventually concluded that you were less interested than you had first appeared, so …” He hesitates, his gaze skating sideways. “I learned to pretend.”

John blinks.

He thinks back on the first forty-eight hours of their acquaintance – a period responsible for some of the most vivid and happiest memories of his life – and finds that, yes, through this lens some of it looks quite different from what he’s been letting himself remember.

“So,” he says, finally, “basically I’m an idiot.”

Sherlock gives him a look. “I believe I may have mentioned this fact to you once or twice before,” he says.

* * *

“There’s something I can’t work out.”

John blinks. _Did I just hear_ those _words in_ that _voice?_

“Sorry?”

Sherlock looks up from his book – which appears to be an organic chemistry textbook in German – with a put-upon sigh.

“You heard me.”

“Okay,” John says. “What is it?”

“Why all the women? That is, why were there never any men?”

John looks up at the ceiling – down at his toes – scratches his eyebrow. “Look,” he says at last. “You know the Kinsey scale?”

Sherlock makes his _I don’t know but I don’t want to admit it_ face, and John fakes a cough to hide his grin.

“It’s a … construct,” John says. “Harry explained it to me, back when we were teenagers trying to sort ourselves out. She was always pissed off with me for letting people assume I was straight—taking the easy way out. One of the reasons we don’t get on. Anyway, the Kinsey Scale does miss out quite a few categories – including asexuals, which, by the way, was one of my theories about you—”

Sherlock snorts.

“Okay, but it did make some sense at the time, Sherlock. Anyway, basically, if you’re a zero on the scale, it means you’re absolutely one hundred percent straight, and if you’re a six, you’re, er, straight-up gay, and there’s a range of options between. Harry describes herself as a five – the Kinsey descriptor is ‘predominantly homosexual, only incidentally heterosexual’ – and I’m about a two, which means mainly straight but, well, not as straight as all that.” John ducks his head self-consciously, and decides he might as well go the whole hog with this while he’s about it. “And, er … a bit less straight than usual while deployed. Quite a bit less, actually. So … so I maybe went looking the other direction a bit when I got back, just for the novelty. And, er, because … Bollocks.” He scrubs his hand across the back of his neck. “I am really bad at this.”

“At what?” Sherlock sounds genuinely curious. “You can’t mean talking about the spectrum of sexual orientations; you’ve been doing that fairly competently for fifty-two seconds straight.”

John can’t help the short, sharp bark of laughter that emerges in reaction to this. _Only Sherlock_.

“No,” he says. “Textbook definitions, I can do those. Not so good at, um. Self-analysis.” _This is ridiculous. Put up or shut up, Watson._ “I wasn’t trying to pull blokes,” he says, staring stubbornly down at the carpet, “because for _some reason_ I just suddenly wasn’t interested in blokes who weren’t you.”

He risks a glance up at Sherlock, who is being eerily silent, and surprises him in an unguardedly poleaxed expression. Sherlock quickly smooths his face back to neutral interest, but it’s too late, and John surges up out of his chair and pulls Sherlock to his feet, then rocks up onto his toes, slides one hand around the back of Sherlock’s curly head and kisses him soundly.

After a moment or two, Sherlock gets with the programme and kisses back with enthusiasm.

“In case you were wondering,” he says, slightly breathless, a few minutes later, “I’m also not interested in, er, blokes who aren’t you.”

“Good,” John says, and allows himself a little smirk. Then, because he’s genuinely curious, “And … what about women?”

Sherlock’s little moue of distaste – quickly controlled – is too reflexive to be faked.

“Um, okay,” John says. “Sorry, that was completely out of order. I was just—”

“The answer to your question,” Sherlock says distantly, gazing at some indeterminate point over John’s left shoulder, “is six.”

_Six? Six what?_ Just in time, John remembers that a few minutes ago he was explaining the Kinsey scale. “Okay,” he says. “Okay.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If you were thinking that I stole the bit about the geese from Cabin Pressure Uskerty, you were absolutely right.


End file.
